It worked!!! as you can see I have a bit of sanding and staining to do. Most of the works here I did in the last four or five weeks. I've been carving on and off for about seven months now. I get my ideas and inspiration from many of you on this site. thanks to all who take the time to respond and help beginners who find this place.
the three on the right are actually chairs. Here is a picture of two of them that I finished this afternoon.

Ona: I saw your house on another thread last week and really thought it was great. It looked like dear old Clairemont. In all my travel I've never come across it. I have not figured out what to do with all the stuff I've been making lately, but hopefully I'll sell some of them. Otherwise I'll have to throw them away because I'm running out of space. I have logs in my front yard, back yard,garage,living room, and close to everywhere else on my sprawling estate...

Here's a picture of my first carving attempt. The only tools I had were a small dovetail saw, a pruning saw, and a small hand planer. When I started, I didn't know if I had the right tools or even the right type of tree. The log was a Mexican fan palm that had been dead for quite some time and was dry throughout. I grabbed my tools and took to it. Here is the result:
after this, I turned it around and did this on the other side:
Here it is after burning and staining:
It was fun and I've been obsessively carving ever since....
More to come...

BK: I carved my first piece around June or July of '05. Then it took about two or three months of wasted time with a bunch of queen palms...more about that later. Then in October I had a little accident with a loose rope from my shade tarp, some unexpected wind gusts, a chain saw that I was using, and my face. I took about a month off to pursue a career as a movie extra; I wanted to turn my tradgedy into a triumph and I figured to cash in as the weirdo scar faced stitches guy in prison or horror movies. But alas, I had to get all my stitches out and the scars turned out to be not as bad as expected. So I made about 6 or 7 tikis before january 06. Then in january I had a tree service deliver about 20 logs to my house and I got over my fear of power tools and went hog wild. I made 5 or 6 pieces in jan and have been keeping that pace the last few months. I just had another 22 logs delivered about three weeks ago so I have plenty more to get to. So I feel like a beginner because I feel like I have so much more that I'd like to try and I've just barely begun a long journey. On my one year anniversary I'll change my official designation to an experienced carver. Until then, for a couple more months or so, i'm just a beginner. Oh yeah, thanks for posting, commenting, and being such a presence and inspiration on this site.

Hey Buzzy, these are Very Excellent for your first bunch of carvings. You mush be a tool kind of person to be turning these out with such precise detail. Beautiful work, Love it.
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I agree with Benz, way kool stuff. What kinda palms are you using? Also, how bad was the saw to the face?

I've seen some bad saw cuts, but not one to the squash. I imagine that rope blew into your bar and the saw wrapped it up and pulled up into your face? Yikes! I've been carving with saws since the early 80's, and one thing I've learned (and not by eating a bar) is to keep your area clear of anything you don't want cut or that can bind the saw, and wear as much safety gear as you can stand. Glad you survived and have continued to carve. You seem to have a real gift in designing your pieces. They are very clean and stylized. If you want to step them up a bit, work on cutting deeper into the logs. You'll find, as you stain those, that you may want some more depth to make them really pop.

Thanks for all the nice comments and being so welcoming. Here is tiki #2. For this one I used Queen or coco? palms. This was when I still had no idea about what kind of wood to use. I found this type of tree to be limiting and frustrating. I originally dried out some test logs to see what kind of structure these logs were composed of. I found out that I could only use about two inches of the outer surface because the middle just kind of cracks and rots away. Orginally I tried to hollow them out but they warped and ended up being figure 8 shaped and unusable. So after discarding two or three futile attempts, I carved this tiki out of a dried log that seemed to hold its shape.
despite all the challenges in dealing with this type of wood, I did like they way that the texture and appearance of the log changed every eighth of an inch or so. Here's a close up:
For this attempt, I splurged and bought myself a dremel tool. I still did not have any chisels yet and the whole thing was carved with two different dremel bits. I messed up on the body so I removed it and hollowed out the inside.
I burned it with a hand wood burner and stained it with a floor sealer.
Each tiki I do I use as a learning experience. From my second attempt I learned the following(mostly the hard way):
#1 Using only a dremel tool took about 10 times as long as it should
#2 Using a hand wood burner is even slower than a dremel tool
#3 Spending more time prepping a log than carving it isn't much fun
#4 I hate being limited by the medium I'm using
#5 these type of logs have their own distinct charm, but I need to find something I can carve into deeper